Following five seasons as Head Coach of East Grinstead Hockey Club Men's 1st Team, Karl Stagno has chosen to take a step back and spend more time with his young family as well as focus on his role as Director of Hockey at Whitgift.

Since joining the team at East Grinstead, Karl has made a huge contribution including winning the league in the regular season on two occasions as well as bringing his passion and professionalism to the club. In addition to the positive impact he has had on our 1st Team squad, he has also inspired dozens of youngsters at the club in the performance camps he has led.

While Karl will step down from his post as Head Coach, we are pleased he will continue his affiliation with EGHC as a part of our wider coaching team.

Today we are delighted to announce that Glenn Kirkham will take up the reigns as Head Coach of our Men's 1st Team with immediate effect.

Glenn retired from playing Premiership hockey in April this year, after 11 years at East Grinstead and having been an instrumental part of EG's 2 Premier Division Titles and 7 of the club's National Indoor titles in that period. He also accrued 223 combined international caps, including winning European Gold with England in 2009.

"with Karl stepping back, the opportunity to take on a Head Coach role at a club I love was something I couldn't resist. There are exciting times ahead for club hockey in England, and I want to be part of that. The EGHC Family is one that has supported me on my journey and I'm looking forward to supporting emerging talent who wants to join us on the next stage of our journey".

Glenn Kirkham, July 2017

"its difficult to identify a successor to Karl given his qualities and achievements over the past few years. The fact that he is keen to remain involved as we transition to a new Head coach, speaks volumes for his professionalism and passion for the sport and the club. Our answer was staring us in the face all along; with Glenn we have one of the current generation's most respected players and another consummate professional. We're all delighted Glenn will begin his Premiership coaching career at EG and can't wait to build our support team around him"

Simon Longhurst, July 2017

Glenn celebrating his retirement from playing, following EGHC's home match against Canterbury in the 2016/2017 season.

Today, England Hockey announce that it will become a part of the new International Hockey Pro League, to begin in January 2019. The new league, which is due to launch in January 2019, will see the nine best men's and nine best women's teams from around the world play each other home and away every year, across a total of 144 games. The fixtures will take place in national stadiums, week in, week out, from January to June.

In another huge boost for the sport on these shores, Glasgow will play host to Pakistan's men in this League, bringing yet more world class hockey to Great Britain.

As the Hockey Pro League will provide teams with a way of qualifying for the Olympics, both the England men's and women's teams will become Great Britain in the two years prior to the Olympic Games.

Winners of the 2017 Sultan Azlan Shah Hockey Cup (playing as Great Britain) and bronze medalists at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, England's men are a team that has huge ambitions to get into podium positions at major hockey events. Currently ranked seventh in the FIH Hero World Rankings, at both the Hockey World Cup in 2014 and the EuroHockey Nations in 2015, England finished fourth.

England's women won the Unibet EuroHockey Championships in 2015 and a silver medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Playing as Great Britain, they won gold at the Rio Olympics and moved to second in the world rankings as a result.

The confirmation of teams follows approval from the FIH Executive Board. Their decision was based on recommendations from the FIH Event Portfolio Implementation Panel (EPIP) who were tasked with assessing each of the candidate applications against defined partici-pation criteria.

We're delighted to share the news that Daniel Faulkner will join East Grinstead Hockey Club for the coming season...

Daniel joins East Grinstead from Berliner where he played alongside former EG defender, Martin Haner in the German Premier League. Daniel spent time at Berliner following his studies at Loughborough University where he held the role of 1st Team Captain. At EG he will join his brother, Simon.

Its been a busy and successful few weeks for England and GB's David Condon and Chris Griffiths. Both were named yesterday in the England Squad to compete in the Summer's World League competition.

David and Chris have brought dynamic attacking flair as well as passion and enthusiasm to EG over the past few seasons. Both have faced adversity in the past 12 months; Chris returning to action recently in GB's tournament win in Malaysia after a lengthy period out with injury, and David completing his recuperation alongside the squad it that same tournament.

We're delighted that Chris and David have chosen to remain with East Grinstead Hockey Club and continue to play important roles in the team. Both are role model athletes, inspiring our young players through their actions on the pitch and their behaviour off it.

Equally importantly we're everso pleased that the East Grinstead Hockey Family will continue to welcome the Condon family and the Griffiths family as together we support our Men's 1st Team !

Meanwhile, we wish David and Chris every success in the coming weeks in a critical series of matches

Learn about the England Squad which will compete in the Summer's World League, seeking World Cup qualification...

Our Junior Summer Programme begins TONIGHT, Thursday May 11th. The sessions will run from 6:30 pm to 8:00pm and are targeted at Year 7 and above, and at Year 5 & 6 who have County Nominations. The coaching will be led by Scottish International, Ross Stott alongside Sophie Hollis. Click to BOOK !

Our Summer Programme is operated by the EGHC Academy, Ross Stott having been one of the founding coaches and Sophie Hollis being a mainstay of the coaching team at the Academy. We introduced our Summer Programme in 2016 and this year are looking to continue to do so with a great 12 week programme of coaching. Running from Thursday May 11th until Thursday July 27th with an hour and a half each week, the sessions give youngsters a great opportunity to develop their hockey in familiar surroundings.

Summer Programme Coaching The programme will be led by Ross Stott and Sophie Hollis. Ross has represented Scotland at Commonwealth Games and World League. He also has coached our Ladies' 2nd XI helping them achieve promotion during the recent 2016 / 2017 season. Sophie has Captained the Ladies 2nd Team, is a mainstay of the Academy and also coaches in the Junior section, so Sophie provides "continuity of coaching|" between EGHC Juniors and EGHC Academy. ​Click to BOOK​ !

During the season there's a lot going on at EGHC. In fact, with several of our Mens and Ladies 1st Teams competing in internationals outside the regular season and with a number of events and EGHC Academy Camps going on, there's a lot going on at EGHC outside the season as well.

Like lots of other clubs, we use social media to notify our followers. For those not necessarily following us already, its worth knowing that we often make quick posts to notify friends and members of the club of things like changes in matches or practice times, weather affected practices and fixtures and also sometimes to commentate in real time on major matches. Below we have provided a guide: follow us because you might be missing out if you don't !

Our Social Media Accounts: All worth following !

We often use social media to post links to things that are more detailed on our web sites. Its definitely worth following all of them to stay up to date but below we outline the different roles of each.

​Our main club twitter feed: important announcements, retweets of major international matches, club and member achievements as well as key events. The most complete source of information about East Grinstead Hockey Club.

​Our Academy "fan site". Again, if you visit us here and "like" our page then you will receive EGHC Academy updates.

... so follow us !

So there are lots of ways to stay connected with EGHC; we'd encourage you to follow us on all of the above so you can stay most connected with the club and what's happening ! You can always Tweet back, comment and reply and we're listening !

Its been awhile coming but we are delighted that we finally have a new web site with which to share news, match reports, galleries and so on. We have made the decision to launch the web site even though there are some pieces we are still working on, so you will notice some small "teething issues" over the coming weeks. We'll be asking for feedback soon !

We've made an effort to ensure all our web sites look and feel similar as far as possible, so you know when you are on an official East Grinstead Hockey Club site !

Our sites are: eghockey.CO.uk , eghcacademy.co.uk and eghockey.ORG.uk

Why do we have three web site ?

​eghockey.CO.uk is our main web site and its purpose is to inform and provide a starting point for everything East Grinstead Hockey Club. We will publish news, match reports, features, galleries and more here. There are links to our online store where you can buy tickets for events and also links to partners who supply kit. We have increased the profile of our sponsors to whom we are indebted. We have built the site from the ground up so over time we hope to be able to add more features. One important activity we are undertaking is to publish the 1997 Centenary Book electronically. The first couple of chapters are already published in draft form !

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​eghcacademy.co.uk is a similar site for our official academy. You can tell its our own official academy because the colour scheme is blue and white - the EGHC colours ! This site is where you can learn about new coaches, camps, see camp galleries and answer questions in our help section. There are links to our online store where you can book camps.

eghockey.ORG.uk is the official online store for East Grinstead Hockey Club. This is a secure eCommerce site where you can buy memberships, tickets to club events, and book EGHC Academy Camps. The system remembers people who have shopped there before, just like Amazon, which makes it easy to return for future bookings and so on. Buying club membership via this site means those who subsequently book Academy camps can benefit from member pricing - because the system recognises returning members !

Advertising...

You might notice that we have added advertisements on some of our web pages. Although this generates a small amount of money, its vital to helping us offset the costs of running our online services. We hope the small intrusion to our content is acceptable in that context. We have set the advertising to avoid any inappropriate content, so please report to us at the club if you see something that should not be advertised.

eghockey.co.uk

EGHC's Home on the web. Stay up to date, check out our news page and even subscribe to categories that most interest you !

eghcacademy.co.uk

EGHC's Official Academy on the web. Keep an eye on who our coaches are, what people are saying about us and cool camps that are coming up soon !

A repeat of the last two years' finals with Horsham fielding a much stronger 1st Team against EG Ladies' 2nd Team, playing as our 1st Team

Sussex Cup Final

​EGHC Ladies 1st / 2nd Team

Horsham Ladies 5:2 East Grinstead Ladies

May 6th 2017

The match began with an evenly balanced and cagey period broken by Pip Chapman when she took a quick free hit just out side the circle. She finished off the move herself, scoring with a reverse shot.

Horsham pressure followed with a number of short corners kept out by the EG defence. However after the continued pressure, Horsham they were awarded a dubious stroke, bringing the scores level. Horsham subsequently took the lead just before half time.

The second half continued with more Horsham pressure before a break away by EG resulting in Robyn Bentley scoring from an acute angle on the reverse.

Horsham then took the lead and gradually as EG moved forward Horsham were able to exploit the gaps and scored two further goals.

Click HERE to check out the photo gallery with some great actions shots of the match.

The small difference between the teams on the day did not reflect the two league difference between the team and the Ladies 2's should look forward to the challenge of South League 2 next season after being promoted as Champions.

Great Britain's men lifted the Azlan Shah Cup after beating Australia in a seven-goal thriller in Malaysia.

No side from the British Isles had won the title since England in 1994, and GB saw off the nine-time champions in an incredible final.

Goals from Alan Forsyth and David Goodfield put GB into an early lead before Eddie Ockenden pegged one back, but Ollie Willars was on hand to extend the lead once again.

Joshua Pollard and Dylan Wotherspoon netted either side of Goodfield's second goal of the game to make for a tense finale but GB held firm to ensure a memorable victory.

The opening exchanges were understandably tense as both sides felt their way into the contest, but after ten minutes GB found another gear and were soon ahead.

Alan Forsyth was found all alone at the top of the circle and fired home his fourth goal of the tournament and just minutes later the lead was doubled. A clever penalty corner move freed up David Goodfield who tapped into an empty goal.

Australia responded strongly but found Harry Gibson at his very best in the GB goal to deny them at three penalty corners before the end of the first quarter.

Just before half-time the Kookaburras pulled one back through Eddie Ockenden second goal of the tournament. A hit from half way was deflected into Ockenden's path and he kept his cool before turning the ball home.

Three minutes after the break and GB had their third goal. Barry Middleton was able to find Ollie Willars who found himself high up the pitch and he slammed firmly past the on rushing keeper.

Once again though Australia fought back instantly as Dylan Wotherspoon broke into the GB circle, his perfect pass found Pollard who pushed in from close distance.

However the scoring wasn't finished for the third quarter. With two minutes remaining Sam Ward and Forsyth combined to find Goodfield who smartly lifted past the keeper.

With just over ten minutes to go the seventh goal of the game was scored. Australia ensured it would be a nail biting finish as Dylan Wotherspoon tapped past Gibson following a goalmouth scramble.

The Kookaburras piled on some late pressure but some dogged defending from GB kept them at bay and the final whistle sparked joyous scenes.

The victory provides a perfect spring board for the players ahead of the World Hockey League Semi finals in London this summer. Both England and Scotland will be competing at Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre in June.

Scotland's Alan Forsyth ended among the tournament's top scorers with four goals to his name, while Dan Kyriakides became the first Welshman to line up for GB in recent years.

Six players made their Great Britain debuts during this event; England's Brendan Creed, James Gall, David Goodfield, Jonty Griffiths and Liam Sanford, plus Wales' Kyriakides.

]]>Club NewsSat, 06 May 2017 17:29:44 +0100EGHC Ladies Look Ahead to the Sussex 1st XI Cup Finalhttp://eghockey.co.uk/club-news/eghc-ladies-look-ahead-to-the-sussex-1st-xi-cup-final
http://eghockey.co.uk/club-news/eghc-ladies-look-ahead-to-the-sussex-1st-xi-cup-finalClub NewsFri, 05 May 2017 20:35:57 +01002017 Awards Eveninghttp://eghockey.co.uk/club-news/2017-awards-evening
http://eghockey.co.uk/club-news/2017-awards-eveningSaturday April 29th saw the annual awards evening at East Grinstead Hockey Club. A fabulous evening with a full "marquee", three course meal and dancing took place with much fun had by all. Check out the award winner photos at the link below:

A little quieter this week with a number of sides inactive due to the half term break, but irrespective of that, another successful set of results - for the first time this season we went undefeated across the club.

Senior sides played 7, won 5, drew 2, lost 0, with an aggregate score of 31-12, followed up by 3 wins out of 3 for the age group sides on Sunday.

Click “continue reading” for all the details…

Helen Prinsloo was one of four players to score twice for the Ladies 2’s, in the process passing 100 goals for the club, so congratulations to Helen. The 2’s advance to the 3rd round of the EH 2nd XI cup with a comfortable victory over old rivals Lewes.

On the other side of the draw, the Men’s 2’s also tasted cup success, although not quite so comfortably as they needed strokes to prevail over Banbury.

The Ladies 3’s meanwhile overturned higher league opposition as they defeated Eastbourne 1’s in the Sussex Cup. Horsham 1’s await in the quarter finals in January.

George Mustchin notched another 4 goals for the 3’s, and Tony Holland hit a hat-trick for the Saints as they won 5-2 and 6-0 respectively.

With no league program, various teams throughout the Ladies club started their campaigns in their respective cups. EG Ladies 3rd XI, entered as the Ladies 2’s, travelled down to a gloomy Eastbourne to pursue the next round against their Ladies 1st XI.

With nothing to lose and everything to gain against a side from the league above the team set out to gain something from the game. The game started relatively evenly, with end to end hockey, with EG starting to show now that there wasn't much between the two sides.

What was showing to be a physical game, within10 minutes EG found themselves 1-0 up with great attacking play building to a goal from Anna McGloin. Eastbourne continued to apply some lengthy pressure and before the end of the half they equalised to level the game 1-1.

Perhaps a lack of concentration from the away side, however this wasn't to be the end of the half with a minute to go Katya Bingle-Williams raced down the right hand side and crossed a ball to the far post where Kirstie Beedle slotted the ball in the back of the net, 2-2 at the half time break.

The second half began and EG came out all guns blazing, literally! Some fantastic team play saw everyone play their part in what was set to be a brilliant half of hockey. With EG moving the ball very well around the pitch & the opposition withering it was only to be a matter of time before another goal was scored. The third goal came from some excellent attacking, build up play for Micki Scott to fire the ball passed the keeper. 3-2 up time to be composed and build on the lead....

The fourth and final goal came from a pounding of the home teams goal, with a penalty corner being slotted in the goal by Georgina Cremin. End result, 4-2 winners and showing a very composed performance against a very physical side who maybe expected a different result!! A great performance & through to the next round of the Cup.

The 3's continued with another win over St Francis. The team without 3 regular players in the side played a good solid passing game and were not intimidated by their opposition. Again George Mustchin scored 4 goals with 1 from Ken Headlam.

As the Autumn mists swirled around the Crowborough Astro, 14 gladiators dressed in white prepared to take on the challenge of this Crowborough team. They ran through the normal rigorous warm up of chatting, passing a ball and then chatting some more. All was set in place for an exciting contest...

The first half was edgy with the Saints playing a wider game and occasionally breaking into sprints. Tony carried the greatest threat in the first half in spite of Dave's amazing off the ball running: he seemed to be wherever the ball wasn't. Tony managed to score two and Mike one in the first half. In a desperate attempt to avoid an early jug, Tony played some interesting air shots in front of their goal, causing one member of the opposition to think that he had been challenged to a duel. Fortunately before Tony Skywalker could have another swish at the air the half came to an end.

In the second half, the Saints seemed to have more shape and passed more, whether this was due to an amazing tactical team talk from Pat, or old joints refusing to move, we shall never know. Pete, aka Gobby the House Elf, kept the back line in order and they rarely looked like being broken and our poor goalie was a little underwhelmed by the whole experience: he touched the ball only a couple of times all afternoon. On the attack, it was Junior Jack who led the way, stepping over tackles and keeping out of Dave's orbit. The second half saw Mike, Junior Jack and finally Tony 'The Jug-Dodger' scoring.

This was a good solid performance and there was some high quality hockey played. We should have scored a few more goals. There were also our three penalty corners, injected by Dave, Tony and Cremmers respectively, which had all the speed and accuracy of an aged penguin laying an egg: none of them managed to push the ball more than a metre! Training on Monday will involve those three in the corner with a bucket and spade working out how to inject on a sand-based surface!